Paper short abstract:

Situated on offshore grass islands and remotely isolated from mainland politics and fishery management processes, these ephemeral migrant fishing communities experiencing tensions with fishery authorities. Community-based management programmes are failing to recognise these floating environments.

Paper long abstract:

Lake Chilwa, in southern Malawi, is a fluctuating but highly productive resource, which follows varying cycles of recession, and impacts profoundly upon the surrounding ecological environment. In response to Lake Chilwa's endemic fluctuations, resource-users have sustained a traditionally mobile livelihood system. Significantly, these livelihood strategies demand occupational and geographical mobility. As a result in all areas and villages around Lake Chilwa, migrant fishers and actors play a central role in economies. Due to occupational constraints of fishing in Lake Chilwa, the majority of these migrant groups are found inhabiting floating houses in reed islands several kilometres off-shore. The locations of these communities depend on seasons, in which they follow fishing grounds. Since 1995 however, particular development discourses that have influenced policy-making around Lake Chilwa's resources have led to a widespread adoption of community-based-natural-resource-management programmes. Externally defined notions of a bounded 'community', which assert simplifications of collectiveness, can prove problematic within Chilwa's cultural and economic environment. Therefore, this paper argues the importance of anthropological research to understanding these economically essential groups and to improving policy-decisions. It asserts the necessity in this context to seriously consider the ephemerality of these communities in participative processes in fishery management.